Page:René Marchand - Why I Side with the Social Revolution (1920).pdf/57

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the Ukraine large quantities (in view of their limited resources at that time) of rifles and bullets, as well as money, and that several of the most prominent members of the Bolshevik party, with Piatakoff at their head, had been sent to maintain and develope by ail possible means and particularly by an energetic propaganda, the peasant and worker movement of the Ukraine (one must not overlook the strike of the railway workers and the strikes at large factories) against the tyranny of Berlin and Skoropadsky.

The Allied intervention, as it was easy to judge after the Czecho-Slovac affair, was, therefore, going to have political result of merely embarrassing and weakening the Bolshevik action in the Ukraine, by obliging them to defend themselves on other parts of Russia as they had already been obliged to defend themselves on the Volga. The first contigents of the Red Army, which had just been formed, instead of being free to support the Ukraine peasants, either directly or indirectly, by menacing the occupation aby hordes of German Imperialism (weakened and disorganized by the active propaganda of the bolshëviks), were to be hurled one after the other against Allied troops. And, owing to this, German Imperialism was to be given a moment of respite from the Russian side, was to continue, at least for a few weeks, and perhaps for, some months, its cynical exploitation of the occupied regions and in this manner to find fresh resources for the continuation of the bloody world butchery!

Unfortunately, events which were to follow with irresistible logic, hastened to confirm my sad forebodings.